A suburban
retreat set in 2.5 acres of land in the outskirts of New Delhi, this home
combines nostalgia for fast disappearing sprawling traditional family homes
with a modern ecological sensibility. It
provides the residents a spatially rich & visually arresting setting for
their relatively secluded & book oriented lifestyle and a home for their
possessions collected over a lifetime during working sojourns in varied
countries across the globe.

The owners are
a couple engaged in literary & non profit activities. Having lived in and
worked with NGOs in various countries for many years during which they hankered
to return to familiar surroundings in as well as to bring their skills back to
development issues of India, they were lucky enough to be able to purchase this
rather low lying piece of agricultural land just South of Delhi at a low ebb in
Delhi’s price cycles. With tastes quite far removed from the flashy farm houses
cropping up in Delhi’s hinterlands they envisaged in their mind’s eye a quiet
unassuming refuge in the midst of greenery and a place to try out initiatives
in organic farming and sustainable living.

Designed in
an idiom evoking rural homes from the culturally & architecturally distinct
region of South India it reflects the owner couple’s cultural roots. Though
translocated from the warm coastal & wet region of Kerala to the hot
temperate climate of Delhi -A careful selection of apt components of that idiom
in the form of lofty internal volumes under pitched tiled roofs, deep
surrounding verandahs as shading devices, courtyard centric planning to reinforce
the Stack effect of cooling, the presence of numerous water bodies to cool
prevalent breezes and other design interventions like plan orientation towards desirable sun &
breeze directions and massing to help
mutual shading all help to adapt the idiom to another climatic zone.

Energy
saving in the form of the above passive cooling devices & design form is
furthered by ample yet sun protected openings & cross ventilation to
maximize daylight & natural cooling to reduce the need for electricity.

Ecological
interventions include water recycling, rain water harvesting, use of solar
energy for water heating & the use of local as well as recycled materials
in the house over & above the organic farm that occupies the rest of the
property.

The
house is designed around a multiplicity of lushly planted courtyards, the
differing treatment of each courtyard helping to imbue the progression through
the house with different experiences at each pause while planning on an
emphatic axial corridor / verandah helps
pull the focus back from time to time to the main gardens which have been kept
behind the house for the sake of privacy as well as to face morning &
winter sun. Occasional interventions like antique doors, stone sculpture and
other artefacts further energize the progression